On the Subject and Boundaries of Global Studies

The origins and formation of Global Studies as an interdisciplinary sphere of academic knowledge refer to the last quarter of the 20th century. Its emergence was the result of the process of integration of different disciplines in attempts to solve complicated and complex problems of the planetary scale. At the same time the notion ‘Global Studies’ itself, though being in use already in the 1970s, was not widely spread then. Its content has started to be discussed seriously since the end of the 1990s only when the main attention of researchers switched from global problems to comprehension of the globalization phenomenon. By that time, a considerable theoretical and factual data had been accumulated in the sphere of planetary processes and phenomena, and the terms ‘global studies’, ‘globalization’, ‘global world’, ‘antiglobalizm’, ‘global problems’ etc. became common, having become wide-spread not only in academic literature, mass media and political vocabulary but also in everyday vocabulary, too. So, the necessary conditions for the formation of a new research field have appeared, although it is not accepted unambiguously by all even today.

The matter is that the basic meaning of the mentioned above definitions at the level of general idea seems to provoke no special difficulties, however in the academic sphere their content remains a subject of serious discussions and needs to be defined more precisely, as different researchers quite often interpret them differently. Thus, for instance, some consider global studies an academic discipline[1], others see it as a sphere of social practice[2], while yet others as a supradisciplinary branch of academic knowledge[3], and someone completely denies its right for existence. There are no less discrepancies with respect to globalization which is sometimes interpreted either as a cause of global problems or on the contrary, as its direct consequence. At the same time some scholars believe that globalization is an objective process, and global studies aim at investigating this process and its consequences, others view globalization as a result of the action of definite social-economic structures or political forces in the international arena, what also assigns a fundamentally different prospective in understanding of global studies.

Noting such a wide spread of opinions on the interpretation of both global studies and its basic tenets, it is important to emphasize that it is quite a regular phenomenon, as the matter concerns a new actively forming branch of academic knowledge. Consequently, this is not a scholastic notions game what is taking place in this case but the process of formation of a unified and quite definite language of interdisciplinary communication. In this respect it is necessary to bear in mind that the term ‘global studies’ has for the first time appeared due to quite active discussions and numerous publications concerning the dangers of global problems, which came into serious notice only after the publication the first reports of the Club of Rome. Originally, this term meant the sphere of science connected with researches only in the field of global problems. Let us notice that it had happened a few decades before globalization started to be discussed. And, for instance, the word ‘antiglobalism’ at all came to everyday life quite recently when in different countries the international movement of so-called antiglobalists manifested themselves with extravagant protest actions.

To arrange all this terminology in a certain system becomes an urgent task nowadays, as the matter of the global studies status, categories, principles and approaches is fundamental. Without this it is difficult to expect a success in proper understanding of contemporary world tendencies and withstanding global threats.

Without an opportunity to go into details, let us notice that globalization is a centuries-long natural-historical process; global problems are a determined result of this process; and global studies is the sphere of theory and practice that focuses on globalization and global problems.

Global studies firstly arose basing on the investigation of global problems, i.e. on the analysis of the consequences when the term ‘globalization’ had not simply existed yet, and this fact misleads some modern scholars when the cause and the effect are concerned.

In this respect, let us turn to the term ‘globalization’. It is used as a rule to characterize the integration and disintegration processes of a planetary scale in the field of economy, politics, culture and also anthropogenic environmental changes that have the universal character in their form and in the content they touch the interests of the whole world community. At the same time it is significant to note the two extreme points in the interpretation of both the phenomenon of globalization itself and the history of its appearance. One of them consists in the improperly broad interpretation of the planetary character of social links and relations in the attempt to discover them already in the primitive society. From this point of view, even the early stages of the development of humanity are characterized as global ones.

Another extreme point is to treat globalization too narrowly when modern processes of social development are considered apart from their fundamental causes and genesis, i.e. history and dynamics of the formation of the international structures and transnational links are not taken into account. Within such an approach globalization is quite often connected with the events of the 20th century only, and moreover with the last decades. Besides, it is often viewed as a deliberately defined and controlled process, as a purposeful fulfillment of someone’s policy, and they even speak about globalization as a subjective reality, someone's guileful intention, realized in the interests of a certain circle of people, transnational corporations, or definite states.

The above-mentioned extremes in the views on globalization do not cover the whole range of the existing standpoints on the question, and their diversity can be explained not only by the complexity of the subject, but also by the insufficient development of the issue. From this some negative consequences result. In particular, mutual understanding between people is getting embarrassed, the interdisciplinary interaction is hampered,
and serious obstacles are created on the way of understanding the true reasons of globalization and global contradictions it brings. The reasons of misunderstanding of many conflicts are rooted here too, determined by the fact that the world in its certain aspects and relations is increasingly becoming unified, integral and mutually dependent while at the same time no mechanisms effective enough to regulate social relations at the global level are available. It is quite obvious that without a profound analysis and quite a clear understanding of the essence of processes of globalization it is difficult to expect a successful overcoming of the problems mentioned above.

Thus, today the necessity has come to a head to define the status of global studies, which has already compiled rich material, acquired a sufficient development and is represented by a variety of schools, directions, different associations, creative collectivities, research groups, etc. A complicated nature of the object of investigation and inevitable in this case interdisciplinarity complicate considerably the establishment of clear boundaries of the subject we are interested in, as they quite often merge with other fields of knowledge: futurology, culture studies and philosophy. Moreover, the theoretical knowledge received in global studies is very often connected with the necessity of concrete decision-making what leads to enlarging of the subject under discussion's boundaries. For better understanding of the assigned problem we will make a short survey into the history of the formation of the global world and process of its comprehension.

As has already been mentioned, the formation of global studies begins when they started to speak for the first time about the arisen threats to the whole humanity and began to discuss new issues which assumed the name of ‘global’. It was the period of the late 1960s – early 1970s. In the context of our discussion the circumstance in point has a fundamental meaning, as nowadays the discussions on globalization are weakly correlated or are related in no way at all to the global problems and the beginning of their systematic study about forty years ago. As a result global studies is quite often or predominantly correlated with the investigation of processes of globalization, at best declaring it the incipient discipline counting no more than one and a half decade, i.e. the period when global studies is in the focus of scientists' attention.

However, one should emphasize that although since the end of the 1960s scientists focus their attention not on the processes of globalization but on the consequences (global problems), already at that time there emerged an integrative field of interdisciplinary research aiming at a theoretical research and practical coping with fundamentally new dangers urgent for the whole humanity. At that time it became evident that alongside with the differentiation of scientific knowledge accompanying science for centuries, the urgent necessity appeared to integrate theoretical and practical knowledge aimed at studying new phenomena that were noted for the scale, integrity and complex system of mutual relations both inside the global problems themselves and in their connection with economic, social and political spheres.

Therefore, global studies initially started to form both as a fundamentally new scientific trend with integration processes coming to the forefront and as a sphere of social practice including international policy, economy and even ideology. Its emergence was
a peculiar response to the challenge of time. It is at that period that first in the industrially developed countries and then in other countries the ecological situation deteriorated as a result of increasing misbalance in the relations of the humans and the environment. Soon it became clear that ecological problems were closely connected with other contradictions of the planetary scale. Beyond the discovered unexampled pollution of the environment, the threatening tendencies of the uncontrolled growth of population of the Earth have revealed themselves, as well as the limits of exhaustion of natural resources and the mortal danger of the impetuous arms race that meant a serious danger to the advancing social development and even the existence of life on the planet.

The quantitative and qualitative changes in various spheres of social life and in the interaction of society and nature gradually accumulated during a long period being reflected not only the complexity, variety and dynamics of modern epoch, its particular technocratic, scientistic character, but also in the expansionistic moods directed at the absolute conquest of nature. Almost immediately after the recovery from the horrors of World War II the humanity was drawn into new confrontation that caused the unexampled arms race; the ecological equilibrium on the planet was completely undermined. At the same time the inhuman essence of the unrestrained growth of non-ecological industrial production and in no way limited technological progress became evident quite soon. The misbalance in the society-nature relations reaching by that time the maximum permissible meanings and also the fragmentariness and disunity of the humanity in the face of global problems became obvious not only for specialists but also at the level of mass consciousness.

Here, however, one should note that some tendencies in the formation of the integrated world and changes taking place in it got into the focus of scientists and philosophers’ attention much earlier than those changes had become evident for everybody. So, to the first attempts to comprehend the arising world tendencies and caused by them fundamentally new and common to all mankind problems, one should refer T. Maltus's ideas about natural regulation of population, I. Kant's reflections concerning the eternal world or, for instance, J. Lamark's speculation on the role of humans. Undoubtedly
K. Marx and F. Engels's universalistic views presented in their ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ and a number of other works must also be placed in this line. Organized on their initiative in 1864, ‘The First International’ reflected the arising necessity in the consolidation of different political and professional forces at the global level and became per se one of the first prototypes of a great number of international organizations which since then started appearing all over the world in increasingly great number. Nowadays such organizations become a concurrent part of the world community's life and their number has increased manifold.

As applied to the theme of our discussion, it is important to emphasize that the appearance of international organizations in the second half of the 19th century was an answer to the developing economical and sociopolitical relations which exceeded the limits of national states and generated an obvious necessity in cooperation and coordination of the intergovernmental efforts in solving principally new transnational tasks. The First and particularly Second World Wars gave a powerful impulse to international organizations' creation. Their end was accompanied by an attempt to prevent the repetition of the experienced horrors and the wish to build an effective system of international security. So, in 1919 the League of Nations was established, the international organization whose proclaimed main goal was the development of collaboration between peoples and providing a guarantee of peace and security. And in 1945 there was accepted the United Nations Charter created to maintain and support the world security and development of collaboration among states in the post-war period. The essence of the new situation consisted in the fact that the world having completely divided into two ideologically opposing parts was more and more involved into arms race, caused by ‘the Cold War’, and so the increasing tendencies of globalization dropped out of sight for decades.

At the same time in the theoretical aspect a crucial role in the comprehension of global tendencies, when they were not yet that obvious, was played by the works by V. Solovjev, E. Le Rois, P. Teilhard de Chardin, V. I. Vernadsky, A. L. Chizhevsky,
K. E. Tsiolkovsky, A. Toynbee, K. Jaspers, B. Russell, J. Somerville and others. These thinkers worried most of all about fundamentally new tendencies distorting the natural balance of nature and social systems and they attempted to explain them, basing on the knowledge available at that time. By their works and discussions on ‘the population of the Earth’, ‘eternal world’, ‘world integration of proletariat’, ‘the united god-mankind’, ‘noosphere’, ‘world government’, ‘cosmopolitism’ and ‘nuclear omnicide’ etc. they prepared philosophical, scientific and broad public consciousness to the comprehension of the fact that for the humanity as a single whole that is inseparably linked with the natural conditions of its existence – biosphere, geographical sphere and space – the common fate and common responsibility for the future of the planet is prepared.

In particular, V. I. Vernadsky developing the conception of noosphere as early asinthe 1930s made a conclusion about the cardinal change of the face of the Earth as a result of unexampled scales of human transforming activity and warned that if the society did not develop according to the rational principles and in accordance with laws of the nature, the death of all the living thing on the Earth would be inevitable. In his essay ‘Scientific thought as a Planetary Phenomenon’ he pointed out: ‘For the first time a human has really understood that he is the inhabitant of the planet and can – and should – think and act in a new aspect, not only in the aspect of an individual personality, family or kin, states or their alliances but also in the planetary aspect’[4]. K. Jaspers keeping to the similar views as early as in 1948 used for the first time the term ‘global’ in the present days meaning and expressed serious anxiety concerning the fact that some day the globe would become tight for the humanity and the resources available on the planet would become scanty. Understanding clearly such a prospective for the humanity he wrote in particular: ‘Our historically new situation, for the first time having the decisive importance, represents the real unity of people on the Earth. Due to the technical facilities of modern means of communication our planet has become a single whole entirely available for a human, itbecame “smaller” than the Roman Empire used to be in the old days’[5]. And then further, pointing a really global character of World War II, after which these lines were written, he made a conclusion of fundamental importance: ‘From this very moment starts the world history as history of a single whole. From this point of view the whole previous history seems a range of scattered independent from each other attempts, a great number of different sources of human abilities. Now the world on the whole became the problem and the task. Thus a fundamental transformation of history takes place. Nowadays the conclusive is the following: there is nothing beyond
the sphere of happening events. The world has enclosed. The globe has become indivisible. New dangers and opportunities are revealed. All essential problems have become world problems, the situation – has become the situation of the whole humanity’[6] (my emphasis – A. Ch.). While reading these lines one cannot help agreeing with the fact that although global studies has been formed quite recently its foundations have been laid by the works of some scientists much earlier.

Processes of globalization that came to the forefront and sharply enforced in the second half of the 20th century, and also increasing in this connection interdependency of different countries and peoples determined a new level of understanding of the present topic. Still more new international structures and organizations appeared, among which there were quite a lot of those whose activities were aimed at comprehension of global problems and their reasons. We can give as examples the Institute of Future Problems, founded in Vienna in 1965, International fund ‘Humanity in 2000’, founded the same time in the Netherlands, ‘World Future Society’ organized in 1966 in Washington, etc. The increasing number of other similar organizations grew in the course of time. However, a true interest in global problems appeared after the first reports of the Club of Rome, founded in 1968[7]. Its research projects: ‘The Limits to Growth’ (1972), ‘Mankind at the Turning Point’ (1974), ‘RIO – Reshaping the International Order’ (1974), ‘Beyond the Age of Waste’ (1976) and others were world-renowned and became a theoretical basis of modern global studies. They did not only fulfill the necessary heuristic and methodological function while forming a principally new branch of interdisciplinary knowledge, but played a significant enlightening role.

So, we can say that global studies as a specific sphere of academic research and integral world-representation has formed generally by the end of the 1980s, and it has been developing later due to the rethinking of globalization processes which at that time still remained out of sight of those working in that sphere. The events provoked by the socialist system's collapse what determined the new arrangement of forces in the international arena, served as the main impulse for turning the scientific and public thought from studying consequences to the analysis of their true reasons. And this happened only in the second half of the 1990s when the world had basically recovered from fundamental changes and started to comprehend the new situation. At that very period there came ‘the second wave’ of interest in global studies which gained the so-called ‘second wind’ due to the active comprehension of globalization processes.

At the same time it should be emphasized that for many contemporary researchers who have joined global studies during this (second) wave of the interest to it; what had been worked out before to a great extent appeared to be out of sight mostly because that almost ten-year gap between the two ‘waves’ was accompanied by breaking of the former foundations and ideas which are nowadays quite often taken as rudiments of the past unworthy of serious attention. As a result, a lot of publications appeared whose authors form up their ideas as if global studies is a very recent research trend that still has no results deserving serious attention. Nevertheless, before the appearance of the term ‘globalization’ quite clear ideas about the tendencies of the formation of world-economic links as an indivisible system and global problems caused by it had formed in this sphere of research. The nature and genesis of global problems, the criteria of their choice were also discovered and approaches to their systematization defined, a deep interrelation of not only natural and social processes but also of the contradictions following from here, their conditionality by the social, economic, political, ideological and scientific-technical consequences were revealed.

The significant achievements in global studies in the first two decades of its development are: the elaboration and formation of language of interdisciplinary communication acceptable for different sciences, from this point of view the elaboration and improvement of the key notions and categories such as for instance ‘global problem’, ‘ecological crisis’, ‘ecologization of production’, ‘population explosion’, ‘nuclear winter’, ‘global dependence’, ‘world community’, ‘new thinking’, ‘new humanism’, etc. As a result, people's worldview changed sufficiently, their understanding of the fact that a human depends on nature to a much greater extent than it had been realized before, surrounding him terrestrial and space environment and also on the developing relations and arrangement of forces in the world scene. At that very period it became obvious that interdependency of all spheres of social life in the world is steadily increasing, in particular, the influence of different states on each other is increasing, when defending their particular national interests and sovereignty ­– under the conditions of globalization they provoke fundamentally new contradictions in the international relations. It has also been established that the appearance and sharp aggravation of global problems in the second half of the 20th century is not a result of some miscalculation, somebody's fatal error or a purposely chosen strategy of socio-economic development. Neither are these the whims of history or a consequence of nature's anomalies. The global changes and panhuman problems provoked by them became a result of the centuries-long quantitative and qualitative transformations both in social development and in the ‘society-nature’ system. The reasons for their appearance are rooted in the history of formation of modern civilization which provoked an extensive crisis of the industrial society and technocratic-oriented culture in general. During the post-war period this crisis covered the whole complex of people's interaction with each other, fundamentally changed the relations between the person and society, society and nature, and touched directly the vital interests of the whole world community.

The result of such a development was not only ‘population explosion’ and globalization of economy but also degradation of the environment which outlined the tendency of human degradation. The human behaviour, ideas and the way of thinking failed to change in due time adequately to the changes which started to occur around him with an increasing speed. As has already been shown by the first research into the field of global studies, the reason for the accelerated development of socio-economic processes turned out to be the human being her/himself and his/her purposeful transformational activity, reinforced by new achievements in the field of science and engineering. In the meantime it was established that only within a few decades as a result of the impetuous growth of scientific technical achievements in the development of the productive forces of society more changes than during a number of previous centuries took place. At the same time the process of changing took place with a growing speed and was invariably accompanied by more profound and substantial transformations in different spheres of social life. By the end of the 20th century with the appearance of the Internet, email and radio-telephone they had become unexampled, and the unique technique and modern transport had enormously increased the mobility and transforming abilities of people whose number still continues to grow with threatening tempos. As a result there is left neither an unexplored place on the Earth nor even practically pure territories, water and air space on which natural state the human activity would not directly or indirectly affect. All this gives grounds to call our planet now ‘a common home’, ‘world village’, to call the processes and problems which have turned out common for all the people – the global ones, and the sphere of academic knowledge about all these things – global studies.

Speaking about different spheres of social life and touching directly people's interests, the global studies with the necessity becomes closely connected with polictics and ideology. In this aspect it is rightful to speak about different trends and schools of global studies which have revealed themselves clearly already at the first stages of its formation, when the confrontation of the two ideologically hostile socio-economical systems predetermined its development in two directions one of which got the name ‘western’ and the other – ‘Soviet global studies’. During the last decade the ideological resistance gave place to economic, cultural, religious and national discrepancies which underlay the division of the world into a number of large regions – the original subjects of international relations. At the same time cultural civilization differences of countries and peoples came to the forefront and that predetermined somewhat different approaches to the understanding of modern world processes, in particular Western, Eurasian, Oriental and Islamic, etc. Taking into consideration a definite conventionality of any classification, let us mark only some approaches and directions typical of modern global studies in which we will distinguish foreign and Russian components for more clearness.

In the non-Russian global studies two directions have formed initially: the ‘technocratic’ one within which the positive influence of science and technique on social life was obviously exaggerated, and the ‘technopessimistic’ one making the technological progress, international capital and transnational corporations responsible for the negative consequences of globalization[8]. Later their positions became closer and at the same time were differently corrected under the influence of different estimation of the prospectis for the world market development; so, the indicated division is quite relative now. As for the Russian global studies, in the Soviet period when it was under a strong ideological influence, a moderately optimistic mood was characteristic of it. At the same time from the very beginning there appeared some directions among which (quite relatively) the following can be distinguished[9]:

– philosophico-methodological: within its framework the philosophical principles, nature and genesis of the global processes are studied, the most important socio-political and economic transformations necessary for successful solution of the global problems and underlying processes are analyzed;

– socio-natural: it covers a wide range of problems the most important of which are produced by ecology, supply of raw material, energetic, water, land and other resources. Within this trend representatives of natural, technical and social sciences, politicians, production workers and public people work in close contact. Their efforts are focused on the elaboration of principles and methods of optimization of the interaction between society and nature, ecologization of industry and rational nature management;

– culturological: it focuses on the problems of globalization appearing in the sphere of scientific and technological progress, population, public health service, culture, law, education and other fields of social life.

Recently both in Russia and abroad the attention to political, social, ideological, cultural and civilizational aspects of globalization has increased considerably what has essentially enlarged the scope of global studies and notably influenced the nature of the problems it solves. The spheres of material production and spiritual activity, ecology and lifestyle, culture and policy – all of them are included now in the sphere of global studies which, taking into account the aforesaid, should be determined as the interdisciplinary field of scientific research aimed at discovering the essence of processes of globalization, causes of their appearance and tendencies of development, and also at the analysis of the problems it generates and the search for the ways of maintenance of positive and overcoming negative consequences of these processes for the humankind and biosphere.

In a broader sense the term ‘global studies’ determines the whole totality of scientific, philosophical, culturological and applied investigations of different aspects of globalization and global problems including the received results of such investigations and also practical activity on their realization in economic, social and political spheres both at the level of separate states and in the international scale.

To avoid improper analogies and methodological confusion it is important to emphasize that global studies should not be understood as a separate or specific discipline which as a rule appears in multitude as a result of differentiation of scientific knowledge or at the edge of adjacent fields of science. It was born by the opposite phenomenon – by the integration processes typical of modern science and represents a sphere of investigations and knowledge within which different scientific disciplines and philosophy analyze all possible aspects of globalization, suggest these or those solutions to global problems, considering them both separately and as a holistic system in a close interaction with each other, each from the position of its subject and method. Here follows a significant consequence. One could raise the question of the subject, matter, method, goal and conceptual apparatus, etc. of the global studies, as some researchers suggest. However, one should keep in mind that answers to these questions concerning the global studies lie in a different plane as compared to this or that concrete field of science. In particular, its subject cannot be determined unambiguously though in a simplifying way, one can define its subject as the world integrity, humanity as a whole or the whole biosphere with its basic element – the human beeing. The same is referred to the conceptual apparatus of global studies which (at the philosophical-methodological level) will be indivisible to a certain extent only, in other respects it becomes ‘diffused’ in separate sciences dealing with the appropriate investigations. Speaking about methods or goals of the global studies, attention should be paid to the fact that besides defining some basic approaches, one should enumerate not only separate sciences and their contribution to the research of the appropriate problems but also reveal the way philosophy, culture studies, politics and ideology are involved in the global studies what makes the solution of such a task admittedly almost unachievable.

One more significant difference of the global studies from concrete scientific disciplines consists in the fact that the comprehension of global tendencies and a principal overcoming of the problems caused by them requires not only theoretical investigations but corresponding effective practical activities. The global studies thereby, impartially fulfills the integrative role in the sphere of science and practice making many scientists, politicians and public people consider the contemporary world in a new way and realize their involvement into the common fate of the humanity. It makes think that globalization and problems it causes do leave no other choice to the humanity than through overcoming the fragmentation and difficulties to come to its unity saving the originality of cultures, century-old traditions and basic values of separate nations and peoples whenever possible. But such a unity and co-ordination of actions can be provided only by the appropriate understanding of processes and events happening in the modern world whose knowledge is developed and formed in global studies where the short-term aims and long-run prospectives are considered in close interconnection.

In the end, it is necessary to point out that a number of conclusions based on the analyses of objective tendencies of social development can face grounded objections on the part of those who view globalization first of all as the fight of interests and purposeful activity of separate clans or states at the cost of ignoring interests as well as violating the rights of the rest. The remarks of the kind will be fair and they should be taken into account both in theoretical research and in practice, when the matter concerns globalization and its consequences. However, speaking about the problem of the global studies' status as well as while determining its subject and scope we deal with solving a different task and face not the subjective factor but, as a rule, the subjectivism and predilection of certain researchers whose opinion must not substitute the analysis of the objective tendencies of the world-scale processes.